Posted on 07/02/2009 8:50:34 PM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
Democracy's forces can’t beat demography's power
Even in the age of high-tech warfare, shifts in the world population give a military advantage to ‘underdeveloped’ countries
Richard Ehrman
The word jingoism originated from a music hall ditty of the Boer War: “We don’t want to fight”, it ran, “but by jingo if we do, we have got the men, we’ve got the guns, we’ve got the money too.” A hundred years later it often seemed that Tony Blair was intent on pursuing the reverse policy — always up for a fight but painfully short of the means to pursue it.
The pressure that this put on our Forces is well known. But another factor that has had a huge bearing on our ability to wage war in places such as Afghanistan and Iraq has received much less attention.
For decades, strategists have maintained that raw numbers should no longer be a decisive factor in military thinking. In an age of high-tech warfare, professionalism, training and technology are supposed to be the keys to military success, not population. Yet in Iraq and Afghanistan none of this has helped anything like as much as the experts predicted — and demography has had a lot to do with it.
The problem has been that, even for a power as mighty and sophisticated as the US, occupying a Third World country with a fast-growing population means putting an uncomfortably large number of boots on the ground.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
He could also be talking about unchecked illegal immigration.
Yeah, supposedly new injection of working-age serfs who can pay for your retirement and ensure continued economic growth. Didn’t turn out that way, did it?
I think that line of reasoning went out as the Gatling gun came in. The Zulu bass chorus didn’t want to play with the British tenors accompanies by the Gatlings.
Feh.
The problem has been the Marquis of Queensbury Richard-Simmons rules we have bound ourselves with in fighting the wars.
The way to clean out Muslim insurgents out of buildings is to send in pigs.
The Middle East respects strength, not subtlety.
Cheers!
Then how did England control India for 2 centuries?
The U.S.'s and the rest of Western Civilization's methods of battle no longer include warfare. Instead, the methods include "conventions," rules of engagement that allow friendly troop death while ensuring the local populace is unscathed, rebuilding infrastructure before confrontation has ceased, and legal wavering that confuses all military units as to which of their actions will land them in court.
Rather than making wars so horrible that they are rare and short lived, we now engage in police actions that are common and interminable.
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